Lost in the Cornfields

Part 2

John sensed something wrong, something floating in the air like a kind of metallic sheen. The ears of corn swung all at once, perfectly in sync. They bent and snapped back upright, like a slow-motion film playing directly across John’s eyes.
Milly leaned out the car window, clinging there like a pale gecko.
“Why’d we stop, John? What are we doing here?”
John tried to calm her with a reassuring smile, though he already knew it wouldn’t help. Milly’s inability to stay calm had always unsettled him. It irritated him and made him feel off-balance. He had military training and should’ve been ready for anything. But something was off.
“I just need a minute to gather my thoughts and figure out where we are. Don’t worry, everything’ll be okay.”

He started walking along the road, leaving Milly in the car. She kept gripping the window frame, her face like the Mona Lisa’s, except without the smile. He hoped to spot an intersection or a road sign, anything familiar. But this place felt cut off from the world. It was just a feeling, but solid enough to dig into his gut and quicken his breath.
It was like this place existed just to trap lost souls among the cornfields.
Cornfields and lost souls.
Not a single cicada chirped.
Nothin’.
Not even the sweet, sour scent of corn on the cob.
John stared into the rows of crops. He remembered something about corn containing toxins. Fumonisins. Deadly stuff. Where had he read that? He scratched the top of his head. No birdsong, either. Usually, birds got louder at dusk before falling silent. But here, nothing. As if every bird had decided to die at once with the light. That didn’t sit right.
“What the hell…”
His thoughts turned muddy. How had he and Milly ended up here? He tried to retrace the turns, the landscape, the timeline, but it all slipped through his mind like sand. The only thing he was sure of was where they were now.
Milly climbed out of the car and ran after him, her face twisted in panic, her eyes wide.
“Where are we right now?” she asked.
“I have no idea,” he admitted.
“Where are we, John?”
“In the cornfields.”
“But we’re not supposed to be here.”
He looked at her. “Nope.”
“So—” she tried again.
He cut her off. “We are lost.”
Milly put her hands over her mouth. She was scared stiff.
“It’s going to be all right,” John said, trying to sound steady. “I’ll fix it. Just stay calm.”
His anxiety climbed. He moved to the back of the car the way he would’ve moved on a battlefield. He grabbed the rifle he always kept handy, just in case. He tried to load it, but his hands shook. He tried again.
Then, as he raised the weapon, two figures emerged from the corn. They moved with eerie grace. Their bodies were almost translucent. Their eyes glowed and shimmered, tinted with the same red dust that covered the road. They weren’t quite solid, but they weren’t air either. Each step they took made a faint hiss.
“What the hell…”
Milly moved closer. John’s instincts kicked in. He kept the rifle low but ready. He’d defend Milly and himself if he had to.
“John, who are these people?”
“Take it easy, Milly.”
“John, who are they?”
He didn’t answer. He aimed the rifle.
It was never about the mall, he thought. It was the flare, the lure. Like a beacon over an airstrip that never existed. He was ready to shoot, yes sir, he was ready. The figures kept moving, changing. Slowly, they became more defined. Their outlines sharpened. Their forms took shape.
Then John was staring at another John.
Milly was facing another Milly.
John lowered the rifle slightly, confused. The other John held a rifle too. It was aimed and steady.
Both Johns were locked on target.

A BIG BANG. It explodes, erupts, vibrates, glides, forms, expands.

The two Johns hit the ground with a bullet through the skull, marked by a fine grid of blood that looked like red lace. Each had been a perfect shot. They landed in the same position, like mirror reflections. Replicas in deadly symmetry.
The two Millys raised their hands to their heads, their fingers curling through bleached blond hair. Both wore the same look. Wide eyes, dilated pupils, the stunned expression of someone realizing they were standing over a trapdoor about to drop.
“John?” they whispered.
Crickets sparked into life around them. The rancid heat of summer had faded with the dark, but a sour smell drifted across the cornfields. And it moved with the light wind that was stirring up little clouds of red dust.
By the time the Millys turned to look behind them, both at exactly the same moment, the horizon had vanished into the dark. In its place hung two moons, twin circles of pale bone, floating over the seam where two worlds had just met.

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What if? The Doppelgänger Phenomenon

Throughout history, people have reported encounters with their exact double, what the Germans called a doppelgänger. The word means “double walker.” Some saw it as an omen of death, while others thought it was a sign of insanity. In clinical psychology, these visions are sometimes said to be “autoscopy”, a rare hallucination where a person sees their own body from the outside.
But there’s another idea, though it’s less accepted and way more out there: that doppelgängers are temporary “intrusions” from other timelines. Worlds brushing against one another. Two versions of the same person, walking almost the same path, until the distance between them briefly closes.
When it does, what happens next depends on who’s holding the gun…

Thanks for reading, guys!

Part 1